


Antianeirai

by kalypsobean



Category: Criminal Minds, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 23:33:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the BAU are called in to assist in the investigation of a cluster of ritualistic murders in Las Vegas, Reid, still feeling raw after being held captive and tortured, calls his friends to come and help.<br/>Dean and Sam Winchester have been using their FBI status to investigate paranormal cases with actual resources behind them, to the point where they get called to assist where the Bureau thinks that their regular teams might not be enough. When they get a call from their childhood playmate, they return to their old stomping grounds to find that some people believe that Occam's Razor doesn't apply when the answer involves the words 'Ancient Greece' and missing girls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Antianeirai

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [spn_reversebang](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com) 2013 for art and prompt by [crimsontoad](http://crimsontoad.livejournal.com). Art post [here](http://crimsontoad.livejournal.com/1599.html)
> 
> SPN/Criminal Minds AU crossover in which Dean, Sam and Reid knew each other as kids, joined the FBI together, and now they are on a case together. Set roughly towards the end of s2 of Criminal Minds (no real knowledge required) and AU for Supernatural in that the supernatural still exists, but the boys are FBI black ops and experts on religion and myth, and hunt on the side or when the job provides them with the opportunity. More notes at the end.

_prologue._

He's just putting his Hungry Man dinner in the microwave when the doorbell rings. He presses 'start' before wiping his hands on his sweats and heading out of the kitchen.

"Coming!" he calls, after the doorbell rings again. 

A minute later, he's looking through the peephole at his daughter. "Did you forget your keys, honey?" he says as he opens the door. He steps aside so that she can come in, and an older woman follows her. He looks at his daughter, who doesn't seem concerned at all.

"Just like we talked about, okay?" The woman says it in an even, stern voice, which he vaguely recalls from some school thing, to do with that club his daughter joined.

 

The microwave dings, but the police find the Hungry Man dinner as cold as the body on the living room floor.

 

_i. Reid_

He balances the paper cup on the files before picking them up with both hands and rushing to the conference room as fast as he dares. He's still the last one to sit, and he feels like everyone's looking at him as he finally gets to have some of the warm, brain-reviving, bitter BAU coffee. It almost feels like a slow-acting poison that races through his arteries with deceptive heat as he blinks, and the lights behind JJ start to form coherent images; a body, a face, a symbol, another face.

"Matthew Stevens, thirty-two, bank employee, found in his apartment yesterday. Local police attended after a report that he hadn't shown up to work for two days. Coroner's report still hasn't been finalised but time of death looks to be a few days before that."

"His hands and feet were amputated," says Hotch, stating the obvious, probably just to draw attention to the most likely reason they were called. 

"Looks like someone's taking trophies, so serial killer?" Morgan leans forward, as if this is something to be excited about. Reid isn't so sure. 

"Wait, go back to the body," he says. "There," he says, when JJ puts the image back on the screen. "What is that?"

"A symbol you don't recognise?" Prentiss says. JJ goes on, but the symbol, carved in the chest, probably perimortem based on the smears around it and the congealed blood on the edges, is burned into his mind. It's not unfamiliar, no matter what they say; he's seen it before, in a journal with yellowed pages and much more graphic pictures on the pages around it. 

"This is the fourth case in the last few weeks," says JJ, and he knows that too; he has the files on the table in front of him, one per body, unopened. He sips more coffee, but it's not warm anymore, and he feels cold anyway.

"Wheels up in twenty," Gideon says; it's the first thing he's said all meeting, and for some reason it feels Reid with dread, like there's something he's missing. 

"You alright?" Morgan asks, as they file out of the conference room. Reid nods. After that conversation on the plane, he's still not sure whether Morgan honestly wants to talk or whether it's something else that keeps driving him to ask. Last time he went to Morgan, Morgan sent him to Gideon, and Reid doesn't like talking to Gideon about these things - there's too many metaphors and layers, and while he can remember facts at any time, interpretation is something he has to be in the mood for.

He needs more coffee, preferably coffee that is warm and doesn't taste bitter with a hint of copper.

 

~*~

 

Reid spreads his copy of files out on the table in front of him, effectively preventing conversation with anyone. Gideon and Hotch are in the corner, having their usual discuss-and-assign-roles-to-everyone conversation. Morgan is listening to music, which Reid can hear faint parts of because Morgan has not invested in noise-cancelling headphones. JJ has newspapers in front of her and Prentiss looks interested in them as well, so he's scanning the files one by one, without any comments from the others for a change.

"Hotch," he says, once he's done. Hotch and Gideon both look up. Reid sometimes wonders who their leader really is, or whether Hotch and Gideon are just so complementary that it would be counterproductive to separate them. "They're all single dads with girls in high school, but all the missing persons reports come from work or friends. There's no mention of the girls. Does that sound weird to you?"

Gideon's the one who answers. "High school girls, around the age they try to establish independence, they could be staying with friends, or on a school trip."

"All of them?" Hotch says, in that way that makes it obvious that he's thinking without giving away anything. "Reid, you, Prentiss and JJ will look into the girls when we land, see what you can find out. Morgan and Gideon will go to the latest crime scene, and I'll go to the morgue to follow up on the coroners' report, then meet you at police HQ."

"They're not suspects, are they?" JJ asks, seemingly unfazed with being put in the field and not immediately set to liaising with the press and the locals.

"That's what you need to find out. Keep your eyes open." Hotch says. The plane begins to tilt, so Reid closes the files then closes his eyes.

He doesn't want to see the daytime lights of Vegas through the window.

 

As JJ shakes hands with someone in a uniform and Prentiss stands there looking as perfectly composed as if this were a day at the office, he wanders away from the group and makes a call.

 

_ii. Dean_

Dean's restless. Technically, they live in a nice house near Quantico, Virginia, but he feels like he's never there. As soon as they're done in one place, they get a call or see a newspaper, and he's behind the wheel, Sam asleep in the passenger seat, and they're off somewhere else. He doesn't have a go-bag; he has a weapons cache and a mini-closet in the trunk, and mixed in with business cards and take-out vouchers in the glove box are concealed carry permits for 48 states.

His job sucks.

Part of it is Kansas sending its creepy chill up his sleeves like it's trying to pull him back and bury him, but he doesn't think about that; he just turns up the music and drives, and if his hands are too tight on the steering wheel, he'll make it up to his baby with an oil change when they get home. 

 

They've just wrapped up a case, some creepy guy keeping kids in his basement, and Sam's got Dean's laptop open on his lap. Occasionally there's a wireless signal Sam can piggyback while they drive, but today Sam's looking at things Dean has gathered, and the ping goes unnoticed.

"I think there's something here, Dean." Dean nods, because he's driving, and because he knows there's something there, that's why he's been saving articles and pulling what he can from the FBI database. He's been tracking victims; he's never really appreciated computers before, but they make things so easy and the FBI has records on everything. All he had to do, once the pattern became apparent, was type in the MO and he got a list of possible matches. There are summaries, because of course the FBI pays people to make them, someone's blood and sweat condensed to one paragraph per case all the way back to when J Edgar was trying to take over the world. He's been itching to get at them old-school, though, like their Dad had taught him before that thing with the demon, because there's not enough online for him to be sure. 

Dean pulls into a coffee shop with a 'Free Wi-Fi' sign in the window and orders Sam a green smoothie and gets himself some good old home-made apple pie. Sam doesn't even flinch when the smoothie comes, though Dean's sure anything that green has to taste terrible, but then he spins the laptop around and shows Dean the screen. It's a recent kill, matching Dean's search parameters, and there's the thing Dean's been dreading right on the vic's chest.

"Whose case is it?" Dean asks, because Sam can get at all that with his college-boy hacking skills. 

"BAU," Sam says. "I seem to be just behind someone named Garcia on a lot of these files."

Dean blinks. "Isn't that..." he trails off as his phone rings.

"Reid, long time, no hear," he says.

"Dean, I'm in Vegas. Well, my team are in Vegas, we just landed. The murders we're investigating seem to have some kind of ritual aspect, but I can't place it. Would you mind if I asked if you could come down and consult?"

Dean clicks his fingers at Sam and points to the computer, and Sam starts typing an email to the BAU section chief. "Already on it. Hey, are you just on the Vegas ones or the others as well?"

"There are others?" Reid says, and Dean can hear a note of distress in his voice. He makes a mental note to ask Sam about it; Reid always talked to Sam more, even when they were kids. "Yeah. Is your tech named Garcia?"

"Yes, yes she is. But..."

"Good. Sam'll send her all we have and we'll coordinate when we get there."

"I'll ask her to look for connections between the vics; there's something a bit off here."

"Did you hear that?" Dean says, nodding at Sam as Reid confirms it. 

"Do you have anything on the daughters?"

"Daughters?" Dean asks. He hates it when his voice goes up at the end of a word, betraying that someone's caught him by surprise.

"The Vegas vics all have daughters, around the same age, seems they know each other." Sam spins the computer around again. "Apparently, they're on a school trip; it's some kind of character building survival thing."

"They didn't do that when we were in school," Dean mutters.

"We'll look into it. How long until you get here?"

"This time tomorrow," Dean says, ignoring Sam's pouty face, and hangs up.

"Can I get this to-go, please?" he asks the waitress. "And the check, please."

"We'll have to drive in shifts," Sam says. 

"Reid sounded off, and you know he hates going back to Vegas," Dean says, and Sam nods. That, at least, is something they agree on.

 

Dean gets his pie as Sam drives through New Mexico, but it feels soggy and doesn't quite taste the same with his mouth used to drive-thru coffee and his mind half-focused on flipping through one of the journals they inherited after their Dad died.

"Got it," he says, and has the last mouthful of pie. "Sleeping now. Don't you dare put on any of that emo crap while I'm out."

Sam doesn't respond and Dean just hopes he hasn't fallen asleep at the wheel.

 

_iii. Reid_

They're set up in a conference room in the Downtown building of the LVMPD, which means they don't have to dodge questions from the public as they go in and out, and also that the LVMPD can keep their presence quiet. Reid is grateful to not have to spend any more time around civilians than he has to; it was bad enough being the awkward presence behind Prentiss and JJ as they spoke to kids at the high school and then at the bank where the last victim worked. Lots of people and space aren't good for him at the moment, not with his mind throwing things at him that he really doesn't need to see while he's here.

"These are ritualistic killings, the Unsub is taking trophies but there isn't a sexual element to the ritual. Most likely, the Unsub is acting out a fantasy, about someone who has power over him." Hotch says, but Gideon is shaking his head.

Reid tunes out the conversation, instead focusing as best as he can on the crime scene photos in his memory; he knows the characteristics that are being discussed, and with serial killers, nobody needs him to provide statistics. The Unsub is apparently organised because there is no forensic evidence and the murder weapon wasn't found at any of the scenes, and knew the daughters would be away. The majority of serial killers are white males with a low-to-average IQ. The ritual and lack of sexual element indicates a mission-oriented or psychotic Unsub, but Gideon won't be confident saying either until the daughters are back or they can connect the victims directly.

"You're looking for a woman. Probably in a position of authority, say at the school or right here in the police department. Someone the girls would trust, spend a lot of time with," says a deep voice from the door, over Hotch's shoulder, and Reid blinks away the images to focus on the two men entering the conference room. 

"Dean Winchester, and this is Sam," Dean says, and they make their way in, taking up all the spare space in the room until Reid feels like they're shoulder-to-shoulder even though Dean's leaning on the whiteboard and Sam's inspecting the evidence wall. "The symbol carved into the chest of each victim matches that on several other cases across the country, though normally if the bodies appear in a cluster like this the vics are single men with no family at all. We're looking at Amazons."

"This is their symbol," Sam says. "I checked into the background of the vics, and all of them were orphans found at around the same time, in 1982. They even spent some time in the same orphanage, before being fostered or adopted out. Most of the other cases Dean and I have pulled have also been orphaned single dads with no extant family ties and a daughter around sixteen years of age."

"How did I miss that?" Garcia says, from the laptop in the middle of the table. "He's right," she says. Reid can hear her typing through the speakers. "These cases go back forever. Ew," she says. "Some of them weren't found for a while." 

"Were the girls found?" Prentiss asks. Reid still hasn't figured her out; she's calm even though there's the possibility of unnumbered teenage girls missing, like she doesn't identify with them at all, despite having been one. 

"No," he says. "The Amazons are something of a cult, though they function more as a group of independent cells with several active at any given time. In Ancient Greece, the Amazons were thought to have sex with men from neighbouring city-states or slaves they took in war, then raise the females and return or kill the males. It has even been proposed that a rite of passage was to kill a man, or specifically their father, but I don't recall anyone finding definite archaeological proof. Much of what we know comes from art or poetry of the time."

"So you're saying that we're dealing with a cult, the members of whom find single men, breed with them, then come back for their daughters?"

"Not exactly," Dean says. "Our theory, given the differences between these cases and the older ones, is that the vics are the sons of Amazons, abandoned when they were born. When they have daughters, the Amazons claim them for the clan and the fathers end up like you see. We're not sure why the mothers are usually out of the picture." Reid knows that his calmness is borne of desensitisation; Dean sees things worse than this every day. 

"The victims' daughters are all away on a school trip," JJ says. Today her hair is in a ponytail, but she's playing with the ends, pulling them over her shoulder and twisting. This is disturbing for her, Reid realises. "With one of the teachers."

"That's probably her, then," Dean says. "The whole club must have been set up just for her to get at those girls. Someone should check out where she was living."

"They won't be going back there." Reid starts putting the pieces together in his mind, seeing the latest crime scene with the players acting out the possibilities over and over.

"What differences?" Gideon says, as if he had been so deep in thought that the conversation stopped to let him alter the profile in his mind.

"Some of the other cases are men with no kids, but according to witnesses they were all seen leaving a bar with an unfamiliar women a few days before they were killed, same MO," Garcia says. Sam grimaces for a second, and Reid figures he was about to say that same thing.

"So we have a motive, but we're dealing with a cult." Hotch says. Reid can see his microexpressions change, frustration evident in the way his forehead wrinkles and his mouth tightens.

"Guys," Garcia says. "There were only four girls on the trip."

Morgan hits the table. Dean looks like he would do the same, but Reid knows he's trying to act professionally and not let him down.

"Sam," Dean says. Sam shakes his head. 

"No more recent cases in the area. Best we can do is wait, see where they go next; they could be anywhere by now." Sam makes a face, a cross between a frown and a grimace. "We won't know until bodies start dropping again, unless the club turns out to be a lead."

"We should still give a profile to the local police, in case they still have a presence here." Reid says, but the tiredness of the entire team is evident, and it's almost as if his voice doesn't carry. Losses weigh heavily on them, even if they're temporary.

"Hey, can anyone tell me where you're staying? Sam and I still need to check in and I want to get a good sleep before the drive back up to Virginia."

"You drove here?" Morgan says. With the switch in conversation, Reid almost feels the air break up around him, as if it had been frozen and the sun has made it melt and crack.

"Dean's afraid of flying. Also, if these are Amazons, then it would be wise not to trust anything to Zeus, God of the Sky. Despite originally supporting the Trojans, he supported the Greeks because Achilles' mother asked him to protect her son, and because Hera, Zeus' wife, hated Paris and thought that his choosing Helen was a personal slight to her. The Amazons fought for Troy and their queen was killed by Achilles, who was under Zeus' protection at the time."

"Um, Reid, you know they're not real, right? It's all just a myth," Morgan says.

"Actually, archaeologists believe they have found the site of ancient Troy," Reid says.

"Real or not, we're dealing with an Unsub who seems to be emulating what they believe to be a Hellenistic ritual." Hotch says it as if it's just like any other case where there's a cult based on a religious delusion, and Reid watches Dean and Sam nod like they're used to people believing what they have to instead of seeing through to the simpler solution. 

Dean puts a hand on his shoulder as the rest of the team files out to brief the task force on the profile. "Not everyone understands," he says. 

He means 'not everyone's seen their mother possessed by a demon' and 'not everyone's Dad died killing that demon', but it's enough. Sam stays with him, putting the files in some kind of order, but Dean goes out to hear the briefing. Dean fits in like he belongs next to Gideon and Morgan, worn dark jeans and layered shirts hiding the guns and the knife Reid knows he took off a demon before he killed it. Sam doesn't say anything, but Reid knows Sam's watching him and can see everything - the redness under his eyes, the faint tremor in his hands, the pale sheen of sweat over his chalky white skin. He hates it, what he's become and that it's so obvious, and the feeling he can't do anything to change it.

_iv. Sam_

He's not sure what Dean was thinking, probably that they'd ride on in, save the day and leave again, but it turns out that they're not done even though they've established that there won't be any more vics in town unless the Amazons start looking for new partners. Sam knows they won't; they've attracted enough attention here, and it was probably only one or two clan members anyway. They planned to retrieve their heirs, not make new ones.

However, when the girls don't come back from their trip as expected, the search for a serial killer turns into a search for a kidnapper. Sam knows the basics; without a ransom note, with this level of planning and the amount of time already passed, if this were a non-supernatural kidnapping they'd be looking for bodies, asking the family to get on the news, and looking at every aspect of the victims' lives.

Sam helps where he can, though Dean just sits in their motel room and goes through the papers and their computer. Dean says he's trying to find a pattern, see if he can work out where the Amazons might be or where they'll go, but Sam knows that's useless; they've gone undetected for hundreds of years, and they only knew what to look for because of Caleb's journal, left to their Dad and then to them. His own work is just as useless, in part because the misper investigation is backward; the girls were already analysed when everyone was looking for who killed their dads, while there's no family to trot out to keep the civilians interested and prompt them to come forward, and if the Amazons have taken them back there won't be any bodies. In talking to the girls' teachers and schoolmates, he's learned nothing but that he's glad high school is behind him. He and Dean went to Valley High, but it's still uncomfortably familiar, enough that he's glad to be back downtown. It's even a relief not to be in the FBI building, where he might run into someone likely to remember him from classes at Quantico. He could do without that, with everything.

Reid waylays him before he gets to the building, though; he can see what Dean meant when he said he was worried. Reid's tie is crooked, and his shirt is half-untucked and uneven across his shoulders; even his jacket looks exhausted from the way Reid clutches it in the Nevada heat. His eyes are rimmed dark and his skin is paler than usual. 

"JJ got something on the tip line; they're raiding a house. Supposedly, it's where the Amazons were living, since the teacher's house was clean." Reid looks put out, and Sam belatedly puts the pieces together. Reid is not on the raid; he's here, and Sam and therefore Dean weren't informed of any progress or the possibility of a raid.

"We're not supposed to interfere now it's a misper?" Sam says, and Reid shrugs in response. 

"I'm supposed to get you and Garcia to go through school records to see if there was anyone else in the club, or who might be a target. Garcia said she doesn't need us, though."

 

Sam calls Dean, ostensibly to update him, but he finds that Dean also has nothing, and the club was just a local thing, tied to a dead-end charity. Sam tells him he'll bring takeout, and under no circumstances is he to leave the room. It almost makes Reid smile, but Sam sees the way it doesn't quite happen; the twitch turns into a blink and the expression is gone.

"If they find anything they'll call you," Sam says. "So let's go." 

He opens the passenger door of Dean's Impala. Reid hesitates only for a moment before slipping inside, like he's thin enough that the breeze just put him there. 

"Can we stop at a bookstore?" Reid says, as Sam starts the car and adjusts the radio.

"Sure," Sam says, because that time Reid sounded like he used to, before.

"You think we should have told them the girls were the ones who killed their fathers?" Reid says, a moment later. Sam sighs, flicks the radio off and pulls over.

"Dean and I keep these kinds of secrets as part of our job, Reid. Having the profile out there of the visible Amazons, the ones who cover things up and handle the recruiting, is going to be more helpful next time. Besides, what would it do, besides traumatise the kids at that school and scare a lot of people who aren't in danger?"

Reid nods, but he looks out the window and Sam knows, from the thousands of time he's seen Dean do the same thing, that it means he doesn't agree, but he'll go along. 

"Any particular store?" Sam says, olive branch as good as held out in one hand as he steers with the other.

 

_epilogue._

Dean and Sam catch him before the team heads to the airport; the BAU couldn't secure clearance to fly out until the day after the raid, so after having dinner with Dean and Sam, Reid had immersed himself in profiling the now-missing faculty advisor for the Las Vegas High Girls' Club and arranging for her to be put on the Wanted list, even though he knew it was hopeless. They'd appear again with new names, and time would have changed their appearances. It occurred to him that he didn't even know how long Amazons lived, though going by the general pattern of what Dean called 'typical' cases, they recruited every thirty years or so, and would have had to be in place some years before that to establish their identities.

He wouldn't stop looking.

"How you holding up?" Dean says, appearing out of nowhere. The suit from yesterday is gone, and Dean looks more comfortable in jeans, band shirt and flannel. 

"I think I'm okay," Reid says, and he means it, here, with Dean next to him; it's like those first few days he was on his own, and Dean was there telling him not to blame himself, making him eat, helping him with the profiling classes and just filling the space until it didn't feel so empty. 

"You going to stay that way?" Sam asks from the other side. "You've been quiet."

Reid looks over to where Prentiss and Hotch are talking, and then to Morgan, who's in the doorway of his room, talking on his phone. 

"You can talk to us too, you know," Sam says. "Doesn't matter that there's no ghosts in the BAU's jurisdiction, we get it."

Reid nods, but he can't find the words.

"Hey, Reid, I was going to visit Diana before we go, want me to give her anything?" Dean says. Reid hands over a book, still wrapped in paper from the bookstore. "She'll know it's from me," he says. Dean squeezes his shoulder before turning away, walking to his car like it's the end of a movie. 

"Don't be a stranger," Sam says.

"I won't," Reid says, and then Sam leaves too. Reid picks up his go-bag and heads to the SUV. The sooner he's back home, working, and away from the weight of his memories, the better.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AMAZONS** are thought to have lived in the area now known as Turkey and their territory may have reached as far as Cyprus. A city-state run and maintained by women, men were taken as slaves and used only for labour and for procreation, although Amazon women would often visit a neighbouring city-state for the latter. Female children were adopted and trained as citizens, but male children were exposed or returned to their fathers.  
>  Amazons are thought to have fought on the side of the Trojans in the Trojan War, arriving after the death of Hector, and their queen Penthesilea was killed by Achilles, who did not know she was a woman until he stripped her of her armour.  
> Antianeirai is the word by which Homer referred to the Amazons in the surviving text of the Iliad, and it roughly translates as 'they who fight like men'.
> 
>  **SCHIZOPHRENIA** does correspond to differentiated brain function, sometimes related to parts of the brain being smaller and/or an overabundance of neurotransmitters. However, a direct link to any specific physical or genetic cause hasn't been determined. Likewise, there is no proven link between demonic possession and schizophrenia, although any brain damage as a result of the possession may have contributed to its presentation in Diana. This is an AU and as such, this is artistic license.


End file.
